12 March 2021
A former student from St Clement’s school, who is an engineer for NASA and worked as part of the team that constructed the Mars ‘Perseverance’ Rover, launched special online assemblies, in Jersey, as a finale to British Science Week.
Daniel Arthur joined pupils at St Clement’s School this morning, live from his home in Perth, Western Australia, and he also shared a video with Grouville School students and Jersey College for Girls this week.
The students had the opportunity to ask the NASA engineer questions about his work.
Conor, in Year 5, at St Clement’s School, asked “what part of the Mars rover Daniel had made?” He was interested in hearing about the drill that Daniel had helped design that would take rock samples to test back on Earth.
Kyla, in Year 4, at St Clement’s School, was interested to hear about “the possibility of people living on Mars in the future.”
Isabella, in Year 6, at St Clement’s School, asked “if the Mars rover was powered by solar powered batteries?” She was fascinated to hear that the rover is in fact powered by plutonium.
During the assemblies Daniel spoke about how his work and studies have taken him from Jersey to Wales, America and now Australia.
He went on to say that it was a proud moment to see Perseverance land safely on Mars after all of the hard work and he hoped that his assemblies “inspires pupils to become the next generation of scientists and engineers.”
St Clement’s School Headteacher, Richard Heaven, added: “The assembly was an inspiration to the children and showed that if pupils aim high they can achieve. Daniel described the importance of learning from mistakes as a NASA engineer, continually improving and testing designs.
"Encouraging children to ‘learn from mistakes’ is one of our core values at St Clement’s School and has been an important skill during this week’s science investigations. This was a special event for me, personally, as Daniel was in the very first class I taught as a newly qualified teacher at St Clement's.”
gov.je